Tiny Pretty Things (32 page)

I can’t tell which dress in her closet is meant for me. They all look more or less the same: dark somber colors and high necklines and ill-fitting skirts that will fall inches below my knees. I dig to find one with tags still on it. I don’t usually step far into my mom’s closet. But as I flip through her depressing wardrobe, I go farther in, and reach my hands out in front of me to the shelves normally shielded by the clothing. I know her off-season shoes are stored back there, but as I’ve never been desperate to borrow flat, awkward boots or outdated half-inch witch heels, I’ve never done much exploring.

My hands hit a box. It’s wooden and easy to slide. A little too large for the wobbly shoe shelves, it falls to the floor when my hand brushes against it.

Clunk.

I know what’s in there before I even slide the top open.

A photograph, my mom, just a year or two older than me, wrapped in the embrace of an attractive, older man. The man is blurry, but I can make out a few details. Blond hair. Bright blue eyes. The kind of smile that gets a girl to take off her pants or fall in love or give up ballet. She’s in a costume for the ballet
Don Quixote
, looking up at him like he’s the only thing she sees.

My heart’s pounding and I have to sit down on the floor of the closet. The bottoms of the matching sad dresses brush my forehead, my ears, get in my eyes, but it doesn’t matter. There’s more in the box.

A love letter from a man named Dom to my mom.

And then: a letter from a lawyer to my mom. It’s full of legal jargon and huge, scary, but ultimately meaningless words. My father’s name is covered with black ink. But the gist of it is: he admits the baby is his, and as long as she keeps it quiet, the baby will be provided for and come into a great deal of money when she turns twenty-five.

She. Me.

I’m the baby in the documents.

I want to throw up. Not the way I usually do. This is a stronger impulse, a necessary reaction, a sickening feeling in my stomach rather than an insistence that I empty myself.

In fact, if anything, I’d like to hang on to as much of myself as possible. I’d like to fill out, in the moment, grow larger, so that I have more to hang on to. Because as it is now, it feels like I am falling
a great, great distance into something unseeable. The Grand Canyon. A black hole. A Bermuda Triangle of confusion. Something that epic.

I cover my mouth so that I don’t vomit in the closet. It feels like I will only ever have this one moment to gather information. Like these documents and photographs and evidence of who I am will disappear the second I leave the space. I swallow down the liquid that rises and threatens to spew out.

There are a few more pictures of my mom dancing, of her lithe ballerina body in motion. My mom had me young, so if she had really worked at it, perhaps she could have still been dancing, even now. If she’d cared about it, she could have had me, and then gotten back into shape. Or she could have chosen not to have me. She could have chosen dance. Why didn’t she? I would have.

That’s when I finally throw up. There’s not much there, mostly water, and I manage to get only a little on the closet floor. Mostly I manage to hit myself, a disgusting low moment, followed by a long shower and some serious scrubbing of my mother’s closet floor. I worry that I am scrubbing so hard that the surface will be damaged. That it will show the scars of my desperation.

I curl up in bed, without the dress, without dry hair, without any intention of getting to the Kwons’ stupid party. I try not to think. This discovery is so powerful, so large, that I can’t take it all at once. It is the largest piece of cake and I only want a lick of frosting to tide me over. Because I haven’t eaten in years. Maybe I have never eaten. And now there is chocolate cake in my face and it’s too, too much.

“You ready E-Jun?” My mom calls up when she’s back from the store. I am supposed to be scrubbed clean and in her ugly dress by now. Instead, I have a towel wrapped around my body, and I’m in the fetal position in my too-hard twin bed. I don’t respond.

“E-Jun! Time to go!” I hate the sound of her voice, and when she switches to Korean, I hate it even more. Sounds clang against each other. I don’t reply, and I hear her feet scamper up the stairs. She doesn’t knock before barging in to my room. She never does. “What do you have to hide?” she always says when I tell her to knock first.

“E-JUN!” she screeches when she sees me, undressed and unkempt and unwilling on my bed.

“I’m not going,” I mumble into my pillow.

“Where is your dress? Put on clothes!”

“I’m not going,” I say again. My mom puts a hand to her heart, like that tiny yelp is enough to give her a heart attack.

“Now, E-Jun. You don’t talk back to me this way. Disobedient.”

“I said no.”

“Who is making you like this? I let you stay at that terrible school, wasting your time being in the corps, and all you learn about is how to become disrespectful.”

“The school is not the problem,” I say. This is my chance, I guess, to confront her. But I’m not ready. Information this powerful needs a purpose, and though my head is still spinning and I swear I can still smell my own vomit on my hands, and that man’s face is bouncing around my head like some sick screensaver, I pull myself together just the tiniest bit.

“I can pull you out of school now.” She crosses her arms over her chest and glares at me with disgust. I am the worst thing that ever happened to her. I know that now more than ever.

“Five minutes, then we go,” she says. It’s a conclusion, not a question.

“I know,” I say. But she doesn’t get it.

“E-Jun, get dressed. We will be late.” She turns to leave.

“Who is my father?” I whisper.

She freezes.

“I saw the photos. I read the court papers. I know about the money. But you blacked out the name. Who is he? Is it Dominic?”

She flies at me, cheeks tight, eyes narrow. “You don’t go through my things.” She slaps me across my face, as angry as I’ve ever seen her. She hits me again, and I grab at her hands, stopping them from flying, pinning them down. She may be my mom, and I may be small, but what I’ve learned is that I’m strong—much stronger than I look. Much stronger than they think I am. Within seconds, I’m the one on top, holding her still, so she can’t hit me anymore. So she can’t hurt me anymore.

“Mom, you listen to me now,” I say, my voice steel. “I’m going back to the school tonight, and I’m taking the box with me. I have a right to know who I am, where I came from, and you can’t stop me from finding out more. You have no right.”

I stand, pulling my towel tightly around me. “If you want me to keep quiet about all this while I look,” I say, pointed, knowing she couldn’t bear the shame, the humiliation of such exposure, “then I will not hear another word about public school and college and leaving the conservatory. You will support me, even applaud me, in pursuing my goals. Because I know now that dancing is in my blood. I’ve always known. And no one—not even you—is going to stop me.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

OUTSIDE THE STUDIO B, I
stretch alone along the floor. I want to start the week away from them all. I need some time away from the drama. After I yelled about the cookie, people started calling me crazy. Like Bette. And I’m not crazy. That’s the last word anyone from home would use to describe me. I need a break from the stares. I need the entire month of April to go away. I need to start over.

The
petit rats,
whose morning class has just let out, bound through the hall. They get quiet and whisper and slow down when they see me.

“Gigi’s so beautiful.”

“The best Level 7 girl.”

“I want to be Giselle like her.”

“Did you know her real name is Giselle? Just like the ballet!”

“She has perfect feet. She can leap higher than anyone else.”

Their tiny praises make me smile. I remember feeling the same way about the first ballerina I ever saw. She moved across the stage like an angel, her tutu was a cloud of stars trapped around her waist.

A little one approaches. “Gigi.” Her voice is small and fragile. I look up and a round, pink face grins at me. At first I flinch, thinking one of the older girls put her up to this, only to embarrass me or play another prank.

“Can I have your autograph?” she says with a sweet, mouselike voice.

I relax. Try to erase the increasing paranoia that I feel. I try to follow Alec’s advice, Mama’s advice, and chalk all of this stuff up to mind games. Hazing that won’t work.

“Pretty please,” she pleads.

I wonder why in the world she’d want my autograph. I am nobody. By the look of her perfect form, she’s probably been at the conservatory since she was five, and seen many dancers more talented than me. She holds out a pencil and her flower-dotted notebook.

“It would be my pleasure.” I riffle through pages of doodles and scribbles to a blank page where I write
You’re a star
and my name. She is beside herself with excitement when I hand her back the notebook. She curtsies and returns to her group, showing off her page.

Morkie rounds the corner, so I slip into the studio where all the girls are stretching—their legs press against mirrors, hang over barres, or are in splits on the floor, and some lie on their backs with their heels pulled toward their shoulders. I click my cell phone off, ignoring a call from Mama and a smiley face message from Alec.

I sit next to June, but even she takes a half step away from me as soon as she feels my body too near her own. On another day, I’d care. I wrap a rubber stretchy band around my feet, flexing and pointing until the joints and muscles loosen, but when Viktor enters we all flutter to our places at the barre. We are arranged by height one after the other in a line. I am somewhere in the middle. Neither long and lean, nor short and petite, sandwiched between Bette and June. Bette’s ice-blue gaze travels down my neck and her sighs of disapproval echo every time I move.

Viktor’s shoes clomp across the waxed floor and his heavy bottom makes the piano bench squeak. Morkie walks in and closes the studio door. The
petit rats
press their little faces against the glass panels to watch our class. I wink at the little girl who asked for my autograph. She waves frantically until Morkie shoots them all a look. They settle down and watch us.

Viktor starts the slow piano chords that signal our warm-up. We move through the positions, easing our muscles into the movements. Morkie walks from girl to girl, starting with the shortest.

Morkie draws near. She lingers on June, remarking on a hair that has fallen out of place, and on how slender she’s looking. She gives a nod of approval in Bette’s direction, not even bothering to touch her. Bette’s body has become perfect: legs long and muscular in the right places—strong along the inner thigh where ballerinas need the most strength, and soft on the exterior—her chest flat and delicate, and her hands fall just the right way. She must be working hard.

I hold fifth position, turning out from my hip, hoping she’ll pass me by. Drops of sweat bead along my forehead. I’m not warmed up. I’m forcing my body to comply. I should’ve stretched and dealt with all the stares and whispers. Morkie scans my arm in second position. The muscle twitches.

“
Battements tendus jeté
in second,” she commands. I sweep my leg out to the side and up forty-five degrees. She catches it and rotates my leg so it’s turned out more. I feel the pinch in my hip but swallow down the pain. “Point!”

I obey. “Beautiful arches.” She rubs the bottom of my foot. “Girls, Gigi haz zhe best ballet foot. Zhe instep almost folds over completely.”

My cheeks flame as the others look on and pressure builds in my stomach. I feel Bette’s cold blue gaze from behind. Morkie pinches the interior of my thigh and lifts her eyebrows, then she nudges my butt. “Eat lean protein,” she says and drops my leg. “Especially for performance coming up. Need to lengthen.”

She motions to Viktor and class begins. The piano chords are gentle, so we can ease our muscles into familiar positions. The mirrors reflect our sixteen bodies moving in unison, filling the space with silent energy. I feel better. Dancing erases all the nerves, fear, anxiety, paranoia. Everything is fine. We do an hour of exercises and small combinations. Afterward, she lets us get water and change into pointe shoes.

During the quick break, I wrap white tape around each toe, then swaddle them with cloth. With practiced motions, I pull out one shoe, slip it on, and tie the ribbons. I dig back into the bag for the other shoe. I can’t find it. The other girls return from the water break and change into their pointe shoes while I continue to comb through my bag. I have to take everything out to fish out the missing one. The shoe is hidden at the bottom.

Everyone assembles in the center. I’m late to the lineup, and Bette taps a foot on the ground, like she has been waiting for me all day instead of just a few seconds. Morkie’s face is a solemn line of potential disappointment.